Johanna Gustafsson Fürst & Dilek Winchester: GLOSSOLALALA

GLOSSOLALALA presents Johanna Gustafsson Fürst and Dilek Winchester’s individual works produced in different places and in different mediums. The exhibition curated by Selen Ansen brings these works together on a common ground, through encounters and negotiations. It explores the possibilities of creating a space for common experience and building a polyphonic community by way of singular artistic practices. Centred around the issue of language, the works on display bridge language with sound, text, body and space.

The title of the exhibition is a neologism, an invented word. It stems from the term “glossolalia”, which connotes the ability to speak in unknown and invented languages. “Glossolalia”, which is itself an invented word, came into use during the 19th century and was formed by combining the Greek words “glōssa” meaning “tongue, language” and “laleō” meaning “to speak, to resound, to babble”. Deprived of meaning, the title GLOSSOLALALA emphasises in the first place the sonic character of language; by altering the term “glossolalia”, it embodies the aural, timbral and rhythmic dimensions of the exhibition. While extending this specific use of language, usually reserved for rhythmic or poetic purposes, to a formal and existential level, the exhibition GLOSSOLALALA also addresses the differences which both divide and unite us through the agency of language.

GLOSSOLALALA gathers under the same roof two sculpture series by Johanna Gustafsson Fürst, presented under the common title I Bite My Nails to Reach a Softer Surface to the World, as well as the video series Choreographies on the Unread and two text-based installations titled Sharing the Same Breath and SSSSSAAA… by Dilek Winchester. Exploring ways to produce a beyond-language within language itself and to spatialise language, the exhibition deals with speech and words in the light of dominant language and linguistic violence, as well as concepts of noise, homogeneity, alienation and belonging. In the exhibition, stammering sentences, texts turned into raw sounds, words falling from ceiling to ground to be reassembled by visitors, choreographies that translate selected excerpts from the Ottoman Divan Literature into rhythm and body movements, letters that mediate the production of sculptural objects by connecting art and craft, and sculptures that embody a plurilingual community disturb the communicative function of language in order to inquire into various ways of forming a “we”.

The works on display emphasise that all systems are imperfect, including the system of language, and that every system may eventually collapse or fail. In doing so, they explore the possibilities of liberating ourselves within language by repositioning gestures, words and speech as means to build a counter-hegemonic space of togetherness.

The exhibition GLOSSOLALALA is a continuation of the digital conversation that took place between Johanna Gustafsson Fürst, Dilek Winchester and art historian Glenn Peers on May 12, 2021. Organised by the Consulate General of Sweden in Istanbul, in collaboration with the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, this conversation was titled “Grafting the Hoped-for-We: Words as Autonomous Forces”. In addition to actualising the dialogue between the two artists living and producing in different regions, the exhibition also manifests the collaborations that both have pursued during the process. The performers Gökçe Gürçay, Timuçin Gürer and Irmak Kuyumcu, who were invited by Dilek Winchester in the context of her series titled Choreographies on the Unread, interpret selected fragments of classical Divan poetry through bodily movements. On the other hand, Istanbul-based craftspersons Artin Aharon, Ayşenur Arslanoğlu and Zafer Atmaca who have translated into concrete forms the thoughts that Johanna Gustafsson Fürst has expressed by way of letters, contribute to the way she positions sculpture as an open-ended process and a space for negotiation.

Arter would like to thank IASPIS, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual and Applied Arts; the Consulate General of Sweden in Istanbul; and the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul for their support in the realisation of the exhibition GLOSSOLALALA.

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